Supported Languages

VivaEdu supports multilingual vivas through integration with Azure Translator and Azure's Azure Speech Services and TTS services.

Language Support Overview

Three services power multilingual support:

Azure Translator: Question translation (text)
Azure Speech Services: Speech-to-text transcription
Azure text-to-speech: Text-to-speech (reading questions aloud)

Different languages have different levels of support across these services.

Major Languages (Full Support)

These languages have excellent support across all three services:

European Languages

• Spanish (es)
• French (fr)
• German (de)
• Italian (it)
• Portuguese (pt)
• Dutch (nl)
• Polish (pl)
• Russian (ru)

Asian Languages

• Mandarin Chinese (zh)
• Japanese (ja)
• Korean (ko)
• Hindi (hi)
• Bengali (bn)
• Tamil (ta)
• Thai (th)
• Vietnamese (vi)

Middle Eastern Languages

• Arabic (ar)
• Hebrew (he)
• Turkish (tr)
• Persian/Farsi (fa)
• Urdu (ur)

Other Languages

• Greek (el)
• Swedish (sv)
• Norwegian (no)
• Danish (da)
• Finnish (fi)
• Romanian (ro)
• Ukrainian (uk)
• Indonesian (id)
• Malay (ms)

Service-Specific Support

Azure Translator

Supports 100+ languages for text translation:

All major world languages
Many regional languages
Quality varies by language pair
English ↔ Major languages: Excellent
Less common languages: Good to fair

Azure Speech Services (Speech-to-Text)

Supports 50+ languages for transcription:

Very high accuracy for major languages
Good accuracy for most common languages
Handles accents and dialects well
Includes punctuation and formatting

Azure text-to-speech (Text-to-Speech)

Supports 50+ languages for reading aloud:

Natural-sounding voices
Native pronunciation
Proper intonation
Multiple voice options for major languages

Testing Language Support

Before Using with Students

Create a test viva with language settings enabled
Use the "Test Student View" feature
Select the student's language
Verify:
- Questions translate correctly
- TTS sounds natural
- Technical terms are handled appropriately
Have a bilingual colleague test if possible

Regional Variants

Some languages have regional variants:

Spanish: European (es-ES) vs. Latin American (es-MX, es-AR, etc.)
Portuguese: European (pt-PT) vs. Brazilian (pt-BR)
Chinese: Simplified (zh-CN) vs. Traditional (zh-TW)
English: US (en-US) vs. UK (en-GB) vs. Australian (en-AU)

VivaEdu typically uses the primary variant (simplified Chinese, Latin American Spanish, etc.) but can handle regional differences.

Requesting Additional Languages

If you need a language not listed:

Contact VivaEdu support: jex@vivaedu.co.uk
Specify the language needed
Explain your use case
We'll verify support in underlying services
Add it to VivaEdu if supported

Note: Language support depends on Azure and Azure services. If they support a language, VivaEdu can too.

Quality Expectations

Tier 1: Excellent (Major Global Languages)

Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic
Very high translation accuracy
Natural TTS voices
Accurate Azure Speech Services transcription

Tier 2: Good (Common Languages)

Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, Hindi, Turkish
Good translation accuracy
Natural TTS
Good transcription
Minor issues with specialized vocabulary

Tier 3: Fair (Less Common Languages)

Regional or less common languages
Fair to good translation
May have TTS limitations
Transcription may need review
Test thoroughly before use